Head of Engineering

We are headhunting for a Head of Engineering, a rare profile that sits at the intersection of deep technical credibility, early people leadership, and missionary startup DNA. The current engineering team averages ~7 years of experience; this person will come in at ~10 years, bring craft and standards, and help the team level up.
Responsibilities:
Own delivery across engineering tracks, balancing IC depth (~60%) with people leadership (~40% at maturity).
Set technical direction and hold the bar for architecture, code quality, and system design.
Recruit, mentor, and grow engineers; the team must respect you technically first.
Partner directly with the founding team on product thinking; you are not here to execute PRDs handed to you.
Build and operate systems at scale; you have seen a Series A or similar hyper-growth journey before.
Make pragmatic tradeoffs without sweating small stuff; early stages mean you ship fast and fix fast.
Develop product intuition: understand what the client is doing, what drives revenue, and why it matters.
Requirements:
~10 years of total experience; current level is Staff Engineer or Tech Lead.
Has done 30-40% people management at the tech lead level (e. g., 5-9 direct reports or mentees).
Has never held a director of engineering title; this is a step up, not a lateral move.
Has been in a fast-moving startup or scale-up environment, not only a large enterprise.
Technical:
Strong backend engineering fundamentals, Python primary, stack agnostic in practice.
Experience with system design at scale, microservices, distributed systems, or data-heavy architectures.
Comfortable with AI/LLM tooling; healthcare tech experience is a strong plus (not mandatory).
Leadership and Mindset:
The team respects that technical credibility comes from doing, not just directing.
Can develop product thinking independently; does not need a product manager to define every problem.
Does not sweat the small stuff; navigates ambiguity at an early-stage startup without friction.
Mission-first orientation can articulate why they want to build in healthcare specifically.
Good with people; can recruit, develop, and retain engineers.

Experience
10-14 yrs